Then a strange thing happened: Paul’s face began to change. A lengthy illness when Paul was nine eroded his childhood prettiness; his face and features, which had been pleasing, became distorted in a manner that was more than temporary adolescent asymmetry. He developed thin brown hair, a receding chin, and a protruding bottom lip. He looked more like Peter than Sergei, and had the same abrupt, clumsy movements as Peter. Some who had known Peter began to believe that Paul really was the dead tsar’s son.
By the time Paul reached adolescence he, at least, was convinced that he was Peter’s son, and Peter was the paternal figure the boy came to revere. He began to ask people about the death of his father, and why the throne had come to his mother instead of himself. If they hesitated to answer, he said that when he was grown up, he would find out. When he asked about his own chances of ruling, there were long, uncomfortable silences. There were other gaps in his knowledge. He heard rumors that the brother of Gregory Orlov, his mother’s favorite, was suspected of being responsible for his father’s death. Thereafter, the sight of the Orlov brothers at court, and the knowledge of his mother’s relationship with Gregory Orlov, tormented him. At the same time, he was constructing an idealized image of Peter, modeling himself on Peter and imitating Peter’s traits and behavior. Aware that Peter had been passionately fond of everything connected with the army, Paul began playing with soldiers, first toys, then real soldiers, as Peter had done. Again following Peter’s lead, he turned to admire the greatest soldier of the age, Frederick of Prussia.
Since 1760, when Paul was six, Nikita Panin had been his governor and senior tutor. Paul’s lessons had included languages, history, geography, mathematics, science, astronomy, religion, drawing, and music. He learned to dance, ride, and fence. He was intelligent, impatient, and highly strung. “His Highness has the bad habit of rushing things; he rushes to get up, to eat, to go to bed,” said one of his tutors. “At dinner-time, how many ruses will he think of to gain a few minutes and sit down sooner.… He eats too fast, doesn’t chew properly, and so charges his stomach with an impossible task.”
At ten, Paul began to study the works of Jean d’Alembert, the French mathematician and co-editor of Diderot’s
Unfortunately, this approach to d’Alembert elicited a personally humiliating response. Not only did d’Alembert reiterate his refusal to come to Russia, but he privately uttered a remark that traveled far. Referring to the official reason given by Catherine for Peter III’s death, he said, “I am too prone to hemorrhoids which in Russia is a severe complaint. I prefer to have a painful behind in the safety of my home.” The empress never forgave him.
In the summer of 1771, Paul, then seventeen, endured a five-week battle with influenza. Catherine and Panin watched anxiously as he struggled with a high fever and debilitating diarrhea. Once he began to recover, the question of the succession reasserted itself. Catherine knew that she could not postpone his official coming of age much beyond his eighteenth birthday in September 1772. It was Panin who, in this context, suggested that marriage to some healthy young woman might help mature the difficult young man. This way, too, the tutor added, Her Majesty would probably soon have a grandson whom she could raise according to her own views. This reasoning appealed to Catherine.
Three years earlier, in 1768, when Paul was fourteen, Catherine had already begun thinking of a suitable bride for him and had made a list of candidates. Characteristically, she sought a bride in her own image: a sensible German princess from a minor court. The one who appealed to her most was Sophia of Württemburg, but Sophia was then only fourteen, too young for marriage. The empress’s eye shifted to the younger daughters of the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. Catherine’s plan was to invite the landgravine and her three still-unmarried daughters, Amalie, Wilhelmina, and Louise, to Russia. They were eighteen, seventeen, and fifteen, respectively. Paul would be asked to chose among them. As had been true in her own case years before, the invitation did not include the father.
